PUCHONG, May 5 -- Sometimes, the algorithm gets it just right.

Scrolling through a litany of reels and edits of everything from a dancing raccoon named Pedro to Russell "Hardest Geezer" Cook completing the astonishing feat of running the entire length of Africa can get monotonous; that is until I came across a video of a hulking skewer of what I thought was meat being shoved right up to the camera.

It speaks volumes about me that, while this guy braved armed robbery, kidnapping, and the literal elements, running tens of thousands of kilometres and raising over a million pounds for charity, my attention was taken squarely by merely two seconds of a charred-looking skewer.

But you see, this was no ordinary skewer; it was a stick of lemak...